No. 50 - THE DAY OF THE LORD PT. II, ARMAGEDDON By: John J. Blanchard Saturday, July 17, 2004 The title of today’s sermon is The Day of the Lord Pt. II, Armageddon. Let’s turn first to Revelation chapter 16:12. We will read verses 12-16. This battle takes place at a place which in Hebrew is called Armageddon. If you were to look up Armageddon in Greek, you will find it means a symbol or a name. It comes from two Hebrew words: har, which means a mountain or range of hills, and sometimes this is used figuratively. The second half is Megiddon or Megiddo, which means a rendezvous. It comes from the word gadad which means to crowd, an assembly by troops and cut down. If you put these two words together in the Hebrew to form the Greek word, it is a range of mountains and hills that has something to do with a rendezvous, a gathering place or an assembly of troops as to be cut down. We are going to show today that this is a battle in the heavens and a rendezvous with destiny in the heavens where Satan’s government will be thrown down by God. GOD’S MOUNTAINS First of all we want to start by contrasting God’s mountains and hills with Satan’s mountains and hills. God’s mountain and mountain range is called Zion. In the New Testament is it called Sion and in the Old Testament Zion. That term literally means God’s mountain. Turn, if you would, to a couple of different scriptures in both the New and the Old Testament. Go to Hebrews chapter 12:18. “For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore.” Paul is telling the Hebrews here you did not come to a mountain like the mountain in the Old Testament, Mt. Sinai, when God gave the law and the mountain shook. They heard thunder and lightening, and the people were terrified. You have come to a different mountain. Continuing in Hebrews 12:20. Read verses 20-24. He was telling the Church members of his day, and of course down through the ages now, those who are firstfruits, that we have come to Mt. Zion and to God’s city, Jerusalem. We have come to a spiritual mountain and a spiritual city. Go to Romans chapter 11 please. Verse 25: “For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.’” So deliverance will come through Mt. Zion, the spiritual mountain. Turn, if you would, now to Psalms. Read Psalms chapter 65:1-3. God is saying that all praise is waiting God in Zion. Praise will come to Him through people. All flesh will eventually come to God and will have to respect and honor Him for what He is, the Great God of the universe and His Son, our Mediator, Jesus Christ. His Son will provide atonement for people so that we can be washed clean and come to God. That praise will come through Mt. Zion. We know that on Mt. Zion is that holy city, that spiritual city called Jerusalem. Within that city is God’s temple. God’s temple is very precious to Him, and it is composed of the firstfruits of God. These are just a few scriptures, by the way, about Mt. Zion and the holy city Jerusalem. We have talked about this many times. There are a lot of scriptures you could look up about that. We are just proving it in basic form so that we can get on with the sermon. Turn, if you would now, to Daniel chapter 2. Read verses 34-35. Christ is that precious cornerstone laid in Zion, part of the foundation of Zion and part of the foundation of the temple. When His mountain (His government) grows, it will fill the entire earth. So we are talking about a spiritual mountain and not one that you will physically see like the Himalayas or the Rocky Mountains. We are talking about God’s mountain. Zion, as we find it defined in the Old Testament and the New as far as that goes, is Tsiyown, a permanent capital, a mountain of Jerusalem, a monumental or guiding pillar. So Zion is God’s mountain, and on that mountain is the capital Jerusalem making it the capital of the world! It is a spiritual monument or pillar to guide all mankind to God. Now, if you would, turn back to Isaiah chapter 2. Read verses 1-4. When that stone of God becomes a mountain that encompasses the whole earth, it will set atop all of the mountains, meaning the division of the cities and towns of the world under the government of God. Each will form, as it were, a little mountain underneath God’s mountain and all part of the mountain chain, you might say, of God’s government. This will happen just prior to the Millennium and bring peace to the earth. Then out of this mountain chain, if you want to call it that, of Zion forming this government of God, people will learn to beat their swords into plowshares, stop learning to kill one another and how to fight wars. There will be a peaceful Millennium. This is what we are looking for. God’s mountain is about to rise and fill the whole earth. It will be above all the hills. It will divide this earth up in a new way so that we can have peace and get rid of war and hatred. If you were to look up the subject of different mountains in the Bible, you would see that God uses physical mountains in the Bible to portray things that He is doing with His people. Of course, Mt. Sinai is where we received the law. Mt. Horeb was where Abraham was called. Mt. Zion is God’s mountain chain. The Mount of Olives was where Christ did most of His teaching. Each of these mountains reflects something that God is trying to do. I am sure as we learn, we are going to find a wonderful way of looking at God’s creation and Him being able to tell a story. It is the story of His plan through the physical creation that we see all about us. SATAN’S MOUNTAINS Right now we want to contrast His mountains and His government against Satan’s mountains. They are the mountains that currently reign over this earth and cause so much damage. Turn to Matthew chapter 4. Of course, we are looking at the temptation of Jesus Christ when Satan tried to beat Christ in a head-to-head confrontation. He tried to tempt Him and get Him to lose His position so that Satan could keep his. Read Matthew 4:8-11. So Jesus Christ and Satan had a monumental battle here over the kingdoms of the earth, over the hills, you might say, of which Satan’s mountain is the chief mountain. Satan in some way here took Christ up after His fast. He was feeling weak yet spiritually strong. He took Him to some point on his mountain where He could see all the nations and the kingdoms of the world “in a moment of time”, as it says in the King James Version. He said I can give all of these to You. They belong to me. You do not need to suffer and die. I can give them to You now if You will just worship me! But, of course, Satan was trying to trick Christ and could not do it. Christ was well aware of the prophecies and well aware of what His work was to do, and that was to free us from the bondage of Satan and his government. The point I am making here is Satan had the right to take Christ up to this mountain because it was his mountain. He could offer the kingdoms of the world to Christ because they are Satan’s. The world currently is owned and operated in that way by Satan, the god of this world. Of course, that is god with a little “g”. Now, if you would please, turn to Ezekiel chapter 35. We will see one of Satan’s mountains actually named, this chief mountain. Read Ezekiel 35:1-4. Of course, God does not talk to physical mountains and personify them saying I am going to war with the Rocky Mountains or I am going to go to war with the Himalayas! He is referring to Satan’s government here. He calls it Mt. Seir. Continue with Ezekiel 35:5-7. Jesus Christ says I am going to remove the people from you that you have held captive, and I am going to diminish your power until you are no more, till your kingdoms are waste and ruin. He is speaking of his spiritual kingdom from which he rules the earth. He said you have had an ancient hatred for Me and for My people. I will bring this judgment upon you for that reason. Continue reading in verses 8-15. Of course, the physical areas of Israel have been overrun by different empires under the control and sway of Satan. These physical hills, like Mt. Sinai and Mt. Horeb, were conquered by armies. But God is talking here about the judgment on Satan at the end of the age. If you were to look up the term Seir, you would find that it is spelled Seiyr in your Strong’s Concordance. In the Hebrew it is number 8165 and 8163, which means rough, a mountain of Idumaea, a rough mountain, tough. It could mean its aboriginal inhabitants, which of course when the land of Canaan was conquered by God, Satan had dwelt there, too. It means shaggy, a he-goat or a devil. It comes from the word saar, which means to storm or to shiver in fear. So you have the physical and the spiritual manifestations of this word. The physical mountains of Mt. Seir, representing the spiritual mountains above us, cause us to shiver in fear of what Satan does on the earth and the storm of his hatred that washes over the earth. He is the he-goat, a devil, and his mountain is called Mt. Seir. The capital of this mountain is called Babylon. We have discussed that before. Babylon means confusion, bitterness, wormwood, false doctrine, evil and hatred. All those things form Babylon. False religion and confusion in religious circles all come from Babylon, Satan’s capital. Jerusalem, on the contrary, means city of peace. God’s capital is a city of peace. Satan’s capital, spiritual Babylon, is a city full of hatred, confusion and evil just like he is. It is very rough and full of harsh competition. It has a vile nature which spawns wars and hatred throughout the earth. Please turn to Revelation 17:3 where we see this Babylon talked about. “So he carried me away in the Spirit in the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy…” You saw that Mt. Seir blasphemes God. “…having seven heads and ten horns.” Read verses 4-6. This woman embodies these ancient hatreds that Satan has had. This woman has on her head this title, “Mystery, Babylon the Great”. Often times we point to our fellow human beings and we say they are this Babylon the Great. No, Babylon influences all of mankind, but that is different than being Babylon. This is a spiritual Babylon. If you go to verse 18 in Revelation 17 you will find written: “And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.” That great city is Babylon. It is a spiritual city over a spiritual mountain chain that rules this earth. That mountain chain is controlled by Satan, and we cannot see him. We cannot see his demons, but they are very real. They influence mankind to do terrible things. We can see the punishment that is going to come on this spiritual Babylon by turning to Isaiah chapter 14. If you were to start reading in verse 3, you will see that first God starts to talk about physical Babylon because the physical mirrors what is above it. Isaiah 14, verse 3: “It shall come to pass in the day the Lord gives you rest from your sorrow, and from your fear and the hard bondage in which you were made to serve, that you will take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say…” You will see that the physical king of Babylon is mentioned. Then drop down to verse 12, because it continues to go straight into spiritual Babylon so that we can get the comparison and understand what God is talking about. Isaiah 14, verse 12: “‘How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations!’” This is a prophecy of what God will do to this spiritual Babylon and the mountain chain that is under his control. Verse 13: “‘For you have said in your heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the most High.” Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit. Those who see you will gaze at you, and consider you, saying: “Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world as a wilderness and destroyed its cities, who did not open the house of his prisoners?”’” Lucifer is called the king of Babylon, and Babylon is his capital. He has his own mountain chain that rules over this earth. You can see this by looking in many different places in the Bible. Look up traveling through the valleys of the shadow of death, like Psalm 23. We travel between his mountains. They block God’s sunlight. They distort man’s view of God. They turn man against man. This is Satan’s purpose. He hates us. He hates what mankind stands for. Most of all, he has an ancient hatred for God Himself and anything that God is trying to do. Turn, if you would, to Ephesians 6 because by putting these Old Testament scriptures with New Testament scriptures, it becomes even clearer that these principalities that the mountains of Satan represent are spiritual. It is spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. Turn to Ephesians 6:12. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Then we are told how to fight with spiritual weaponry and armor. Our chief enemy is not our fellow man. Our fellow man is motivated, moved and influenced by Satan to do his bidding. Our real enemy is Satan, his demons and these principalities by which he has divided up the earth to form his own world order. It is a world order of hatred and confusion. This is how Satan rules. A principality is just like a nation, town, territory or a state. He has the world divided up. He has given his princes and his demons control over certain areas. There is a certain method to his madness. That method is used to engender more hatred, more wars, more rumors of wars, more famines, more hardship for humanity. Humanity has been dealing with this for 6,000 years. We are about to be freed from this tyranny by Jesus Christ, and it will be replaced! His government and his evil system will be replaced with God’s. SPIRITUAL WARFARE Let us take a brief look at spiritual warfare. We have had whole sermons on the subject, but we will just take a brief look and refresh our memories. Go back to Daniel chapter 10. We can see these principalities at work and how God’s angels have to fight through them to get to mankind. We can see how they bring messages from God and affect certain things that God wants done on the earth. Read Daniel 10:10-13. We see that the great archangel coming down to bring a message to Daniel literally had to fight for three weeks (21 days) to get through the principality of Persia, which was guarded by one of Satan’s demons, or several of them! He was called the prince of Persia and later called the kings of Persia. Michael had to come and help this other angel to get through. This was a tremendous battle. If you were to continue reading by dropping down to verse 20, you would see that this angel was saying now the next time I have to go, I am going to have to fight my way through the next government’s rule over this area, Greece! If you were to look up in history, that is the exact order that these empires came, and Satan has his demons over each one. Daniel 10, verse 20: “Then he said, ‘Do you know why I have come to you? And now I must return to fight with the prince of Persia; and when I have gone forth, indeed the prince of Greece will come.’” He says now I have to go back to God and I have to fight back through those princes. The next time I come back here, Greece is going to be here! So we are getting a glimpse into spiritual warfare, the principalities and the divisions of this earth and the authority over those divisions as Satan has designed them and set them up. It is his world order. The physical world that we see often reflects his nature, his will and what he is trying to accomplish on this earth against God! DESTRUCTION OF SATAN’S GOVERNMENT These two kingdoms: the principalities we now live under (Satan’s government) and the kingdom of God to come, have a rendezvous with destiny. That rendezvous with destiny is just up ahead of us now. It is called the Battle of Armageddon! God does not want to destroy all of humanity. He wants to destroy Satan and his government. He wants to free mankind from that tyranny. However, if there are human beings who prefer Satan’s government and will not repent, they will have to be destroyed along with it. But as people learn about this, the vast majority of mankind (I am confident and I can see in the scriptures) want to do right. They are deceived by Satan. They are influenced by him and they are moved by him, but they really want no part of him. They want to be free. Jesus Christ is coming as a liberator to free mankind from Satan and from this evil power that holds us in its grip. This rendezvous with destiny is just up ahead, and 99.99 percent of that battle is spiritual between Satan and his forces, and Jesus Christ and His forces. If you would, turn now to Zechariah 4. Chapter 4 explains that this is a battle in which one set of mountains or hills that are now laid low (God’s government in embryo) will be raised up! That is this mountain that will grow throughout all the earth. Satan’s will be abased and laid flat. Read Zechariah 4:6-10. God says who has despised the day when I was working with just a few people? We know a physical Zerubbabel started things rolling when he rebuilt the temple after it was crushed. It had been crushed in 586 B.C. That physical temple was rebuilt. We can go back and look in Haggai. It never had the glory of Solomon’s yet we are told it would be far more glorious some day. So another man came in the spirit and power of Zerubbabel and helped in an era called the Philadelphia era of God’s Church. That man was Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong. That man helped lay and finish the foundation of a temple in that era which would result in the bringing forth of the kingdom of God. We can go to a number of scriptures and look that up, but that is not my purpose today. You could go to Malachi 3 and see that there is a messenger who would come and make straight a way like John the Baptist did so that Jesus Christ could return suddenly to His temple. John the Baptist made straight a way for Christ’s first coming. That will happen, and we must believe it. God has worked through people all down through history. It was a small work. This great mountain, Mt. Seir, Satan and his government, has tried to fight it with an ancient hatred and stop it and destroy it. He tried to stop and destroy it all along. He tried to stop and destroy Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and, of course, all the prophets right up until Jesus Christ. He did successfully kill Christ, but he could not get Christ to sin. He has not prevailed against God’s Church until this very end time. That prevailing will be very short lived, as we will see, and it has not been total. God always protects His plan. Satan will not defeat God. There is no way. You can see that before Zerubbabel, the existing mountain chain will become a plain. It is going to be laid flat. Then God’s mountain will rise, as we saw in Daniel. These are events that you do not see with your physical eyes unless God was to make a miracle. I do believe, in the last days, there will be a miracle. The heavens will seem to part like a scroll, and we will be able to see this spiritual battle for a little while. But up to this very point in time, you cannot really see it. Only a few people have been privileged to see it. Daniel saw the angels, and he had it explained to him. Elijah allowed a few people by the miracle of God to see the mountains around him ringed with God’s armies when he prayed that God would open the sky. These are different times, and that is going to happen again! It will be a tremendous miracle, and all eyes will be able to see this happen. You can plan on 99.9 percent of the people going God’s way. God is not a loser. He is going to win big time! That is what is going to happen to Satan’s mountains. Now turn to Jeremiah chapter 51:24, speaking of what God is going to do against Babylon and these mountains. “‘And I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea for all the evil they have done in Zion in your sight,’ says the Lord. ‘Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain…’” There is no such thing as a physical destroying mountain. We are talking about a government here, and it is a government that was able to destroy the whole earth. “‘…who destroys all the earth,’ says the Lord. ‘And I will stretch out My hand against you, roll you down from the rocks, and make you a burnt mountain. They shall not take from you a stone for a corner nor a stone for a foundation, but you shall be desolate forever,’ says the Lord.” When God destroys Satan’s government, it will be done forever. Jesus Christ’s government will grow, as it says in Isaiah 9, and it will grow forever! The increase of His government will continue forever. This is what we are looking forward to. We look forward to the abasement and the destruction of Satan’s mountains to be replaced by God’s mountains, which is His government. Isaiah 24 speaks of it in a little different terms. Isaiah 24, verse 1: “Behold, the Lord makes the earth empty and makes it waste, distorts its surface and scatters abroad its inhabitants.” In the King James Version, you will see it says it turns it upside down. That is what these words mean here. Satan comes down, his government falls; and God’s government, made up of His firstfruits, will go up! It will be turned upside down. It is not the physical earth that is turned upside down. Verse 2: “And it shall be; as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the creditor, so with the debtor. The land shall be entirely emptied and utterly plundered, for the Lord has spoken this word.” Satan and the people who love his way will be removed from him and from the earth. Those people who have been deceived and led by him, will have their deception lifted. They will be taught God’s way, and they will be able to buy and sell God’s character and develop holy righteous character. It is a complete turn around. Where Satan is trying to influence people to do evil, God will be doing the opposite and influence them for good. This is a spiritual effect of the battle. It is a good thing. It is not a bad thing. We need to clear God’s name by showing the wonderful plan that He has for mankind in His scripture and stop distorting His word and twisting it. So the battle for Jerusalem and Zion is a tremendous spiritual battle that will change the world order as we know it. We may not see Satan’s government, but it is there. A new world order, a good world order is about to arise! This involves a complete system change as if turning the world upside down. Turn, if you would, to Isaiah 34 where this battle is spoken of again. This is speaking of the battle of Armageddon. Isaiah 34, verse 1: “Come near, you nations, to hear; and heed, you people! Let the earth hear, and all that is in it, the world and all things that come forth from it. For the indignation of the Lord is against all nations, and His fury against all their armies; he has utterly destroyed them, he has given them over to the slaughter.” This is speaking of Satan’s armies. In the first part of this sermon we looked at the locusts. If you were to look at this term “nations” you would find the spiritual meaning is a troop of animals like beasts or locusts. God is saying I am going to destroy Satan’s nations and the way he has them divided (the prince of Persia, the prince of Greece and all the principalities that he has over the earth). He is going to destroy those principalities that we cannot see. You will see this as we continue reading. Isaiah 34, verse 3: “Also their slain shall be thrown out; their stench shall rise from their corpses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.” You know we could not melt the mountains of the earth with human blood. There is not enough to do it. There are people who love Satan and his ways, and they will be destroyed. They did not possibly have enough blood to melt the mountains. We are looking at something spiritual here. We will see that as we continue. Verse 4: “All the host of heaven shall be dissolved…” What is the host of heaven? Are they human armies? No, they are Satan’s armies and his nations. They are Satan’s mountains and his government. It will be dissolved. “…and the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll…” That is what we read about in Matthew 24, and that is what we read about in Revelation 6 and Revelation 12. When the mountains and the heavens shake, we are talking about Satan’s mountains shaking and dissolving. “… all their host shall fall down as the leaf falls from the vine, and as fruit falling from a fig tree.” Verse 5: “For My sword shall be bathed in heaven…” Not on earth but in the heavens that surround the earth, Christ will go to war for us. “…indeed it shall come down on Edom, and on the people of My curse, for judgment. The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is made overflowing with fatness, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.” You can read about when God takes a sacrifice. That sacrificial system that so many put down in the Old Testament shows how when He defeats Satan and we become living sacrifices, we are helping Him defeat Satan and He is accepting our sacrifice! So there are two ways to look at this sword. The sword of God’s word is how He fights Satan and He fights through people who become His sacrifice and become part of His army. It is the army of the Lord, and it is a spiritual event. When Christ conquers a person, he is called by the Father. Christ conquers them, and they are baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. We have been convicted by the sword of God and covered with Christ’s blood. You cannot see it that way physically, but that is what happened. You became part of God’s army. That army will literally slay Satan’s kingdom in a spiritual way that we do not understand, but I am sure it hurts. When that angel needed help from Michael to fight through the prince of Persia, it was hard. We do not know how it feels to fight spiritually, but it is very real and it happens. A lot of times we see the physical effects on the earth when there are battles and wars in heaven or the heavens just around us, but we cannot see it until God opens the heavens. Then we will be able to see. That is coming very shortly. When the battle of Jerusalem really gets hot and heavy and Christ returns, we are going to be able to see. Now turn if you would back to Isaiah 31 because this battle is described in a way perhaps you have never thought of before. Isaiah 31, verse 4: “For thus the Lord has spoken to me: ‘As a lion roars, and a young lion over his prey (when a multitude of shepherds is summoned against him, he will not be afraid of their voice nor be disturbed by their noise), so the Lord of hosts will come down to fight for Mount Zion and for its hill. Like birds flying about, so will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem. Defending, He will also deliver it; passing over, He will preserve it.’” We see lions compared to a multitude of shepherds that have entered God’s Church and are destroying it. They are destroying with lies, false doctrines, harsh doctrines and twisting God’s name, perverting His truths and doctrines and showing His nature to be something it is not. God says I am not afraid of how Satan has used these lions to harm My Church. I am coming to deliver Mount Zion in spite of them. It will be like birds flying about My hill. Birds signify the angels like the one we saw in Daniel. That is why angels are portrayed as with wings. The seraphim and the cherubim made in the temple had wings because God is showing that they fly like birds. The birds of creation are a physical way of seeing what God does with angels. There are good birds that are clean, and unclean birds. We could go into that, but that is another subject. We can see how God has made the earth and creation in ways to help us understand His mind, His thinking and His plan. Here we see portrayed in all of these different scriptures different events that take place and are part of the Battle of Armageddon. The upshot of it all is that Satan’s world order will dissolve. It will melt away. It will just be gone. It will be replaced by Jesus Christ and His government. Here are a few scriptures about the dissolving of Satan’s realm to help us cement this in our mind. Turn, if you would, to Isaiah 13:13. “‘Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth will move out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts and in the day of His fierce anger.’” That is the Day of the Lord when He turns His anger on Satan. The first half of the Day of the Lord, as we covered so far in the first part of this two-part series, was Satan being allowed to harm the Church, chastise the Church and punish the Church so that God could refine those who would wake up and those who would repent. But then God turns on Satan with a very fierce anger, and it is as if the earth and the heavens are shaking and quaking. It is his mountains getting laid flat as if in an earthquake and his government coming down. Revelation chapter 6 refers to this. We already read a little bit about Satan and his rocks falling down. If you go to Revelation 6:12, this is mentioned again. “I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind.” We understand now that Jesus Christ is pictured by the sun that we see. The Church is the moon. Angels are the stars. When Satan’s government is shaken, it will drop its figs like a tree that is holding on to late and rotten figs, and they drop. Read Revelation 6, verse 14. We are not looking at islands like Bermuda, Barbados, Vanuatu or Fiji. We are looking at Satan’s mountains and his islands which will get shaken down. They will be knocked down and replaced by Jesus Christ and His government. Read Revelation 6:15-17. This is not talking about the Rocky Mountains once again or the Himalayas falling on people to shield them from something. This is talking about Satan’s mountains falling and God’s mountain rising and people, depending on which side of the fence you are on, asking for help. Those who have trusted in Satan and do not want to give that way up, will be begging Satan to protect them. He cannot. Those who are seeking God will be wonderfully taken care of under the mountains of God. They will be taken care of right on into the Millennium as we saw last week with every tear being wiped from people’s eyes. The world will not all be destroyed. The vast majority of the world will be just fine and will enjoy a Millennium of peace. This helps us clear up another New Testament scripture that many have used in error. Please turn to II Peter chapter 3. Many people have used this set of scriptures to show how horrible the earth will be after God’s anger and how it will be burned. Now that we understand what mountains will be dissolved, this becomes much more clear. Read II Peter 3:10-13. The new way will be a righteous way. The elements melting here means the orderly arrangement or the current arrangement of things will be loosened. That term dissolved here and melts means a loosening. The elements that form Satan’s mountains, his government, will be loosened and dissolved as water dissolves all things. God’s Spirit symbolized by water is the universal solvent. You could say that God’s government and His Holy Spirit will literally dissolve Satan’s government, his mountains and his evil system that holds mankind in bondage. All of those bonds of wickedness will be broken, and we will have a Millennium. If the earth were melted and burned and all of the elements dissolved, we could not have a Millennium! We are talking about the spiritual Battle of Armageddon and how God will dissolve Satan’s government, bringing the true liberty of the sons of God and Jesus Christ’s government to this earth. LIBERTY FOR THE CAPTIVES Turn, if you would, to Romans chapter 8. Read verses 18-21. The creation is not going to be destroyed. It is going to be liberated. Satan wants to destroy it, and God will not let it happen. Continuing reading in Romans 8:22-23. The Church waits, the dead saints are waiting and the world, without knowing yet, is waiting for its liberty, the liberty of God’s kingdom. It waits for our King, Jesus Christ, to come and bring His kingdom and His government to this earth and get rid of the horrible tyranny of Satan. Turn, if you would, to Isaiah 61. This liberty is going to be wonderful. Read Isaiah 61:1-3. What a wonderful picture of the world to come! It is a picture of liberty for those who are held captive, a picture of the praise that the Church will have for God that we read of earlier and just a concept of bringing good tidings to the poor. This is a wonderful message. That is why we are told in another place how wonderful and beautiful are the feet of those who bring this message, this gospel of the kingdom. It is not a message of death, destruction and bloodshed and the wiping out of the earth. It is a wonderful and beautiful message, and it is what we have to bring. It is what the Church has to say to the world. We are trying to say it. God will trumpet it loudly. It is His message. They are His thoughts, and He will help it to get conveyed in a miraculous way! The Day of the Lord started with terrible trials and troubles in God’s Church. It will conclude with repentance within the Church when many will be refined and cleansed. It will remove their spots and blemishes and proclaim this wonderful message of hope to the world. The Church, by and large, will overcome. Right now it has been overcome by Satan, but it is not going to stay that way for long. It is time to start trimming our wicks and preach this good news to the world! I would like to conclude with Ezekiel 36, the redemption of the Church. Read Ezekiel 36:1-3. We could go back and look up the locusts, the vipers, the lions and the wolves. Continue reading verses 4-9. We will become the garden of God again! Read verses 10-15. That is because we have been devouring ourselves, the Church has been attacking itself and portraying God wrongly to the nations. God is going to fix all of that when He redeems His people, when He dissolves Satan’s mountains and raises His mountain over the earth and brings that beautiful Millennium that we are looking forward to. May God hasten that day for all of us and for mankind as well!